jfischer

All equipment is "almost" perfectly compatible, but when itcomes to the bee space between frames in stacked supersand brood chambers, this is where things start to fall apart.

The only "problem" caused by these incompatibilities isbridge comb, which is easy enough to scrape off when youfind it. I try to avoid it by making my own boxes, and beingvery picky about frame top-bar thicknesses when buyingframes.

In a worst-case scenario, one could stack a super with"top space", and the bottoms of the frames even withthe bottom edge of the super, atop a super with "bottomspace", where the top surface of the top bars are evenwith the top edge of the super, and crush a whole lot ofbees in doing so.

If you were to e-mail kim@beeculture.com, and ask for themost recent "Woodenware Review" article, he'd send youa rundown of exactly what frames are truly compatible withwhat boxes, and what boxes, when stacked, can cause problems,vendor by vendor.

The lack of standardization in the area of "bee space" isa real travesty, but my attempts to get anyone interested informing a standards committee have not resulted in anyinterest, as most beekeepers simply accept being "locked in"to a single vendor, or ignore the problems.

I have observed that little anomoly of bee space between stacked boxes.

I don't recall reading anything about the subject on these boards or in the several " books on bees " that I have read and I wondered about that.

In my short beekeeping experience I have not had too much burr comb build up between stacked supers but there is some nevertheless. A recent hive inspection had me destroying some comb, and brood, that was built between the upper and lower boxes around a couple of frames near the brood nest. However that was only in one box/hive outta four. Could it be that this 3/4 " or so, space is left to accomodate the queen excluder, 3/8 " above and below :?:

Now that the subject has been brought up we'll have something more to worry about. :twisted: Maybe we should contact FEMA about the prob :idea: :lol:

Next, the TBH proponents will be chiming in with alternative solutions. :?: